Providence
by p for pseudonymous
Summary: She's the same child as always, in a body born of dirt and stars, just as anyone else's flesh is. There's a fire in the hearth even though it's summer, the haze of slick sweat and melting tar reflecting off in waves back towards its providence of the sun. Mother always lights the hearth on Sundays though. It is her way of returning to her providence as well.


Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Harry Potter Universe, I also take my chapter headers from musterni-illustrates who made the brilliant Shitty Horoscopes series

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Chapter One

 _We do not know where you came from,_

 _but we need you to go back._

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She's the same child as always, in a body born of dirt and stars, just as anyone else's flesh is. There's a fire in the hearth even though it's summer, the haze of slick sweat and melting tar reflecting off in waves back towards its providence of the sun. Mother always lights the hearth on Sundays though. It is her way of returning to her providence as well, of teaching her children of it, because they are a thick haze slowly wafting upwards until they dissipate. The fire is a reminder of the witch-hunts when magic bones and lips and toes were considered just as good as firewood.

But she—Pirnella, that is—thinks Mother focuses far too much on the past. Instead, Pirnella would rather allow her mind to fancy the way the overbearing mid-noon sun spreads colors across the ornate carpeting in the front parlor when boring down through the stained glass windows—just three, small ones, and close to the ceiling. They are the only windows in the house that face the street, causing the house to often be drafty and dark even on days such as these. When Mother is busied in the kitchen or leaning out the back windows—which are far larger and consume most of the wall space in the living area and piano room as well as the master living space (consisting of both bed and bath)—Prinella likes to pull the step stool out of the tiny washroom that her even smaller brother uses to reach the faucet, in order to peer out into the front drive and towards the village beyond.

Pirnella has never done this in the presence of Mother though. She knows too well that she would be scolded, and prefers Mother's near silent hums to any shrieking she may otherwise do in the face of catching her daughter pondering the happenings of a muggle village. Pirnella, on the other hand, thought it was quite ironic that their house should face the distance of muggle dwelling and back up to the alleyways of a magic one rather than vise-virsa but she supposes that if the world is any good at anything at all it would be irony. Anyways, that is why the windows in the front rooms have all been shut off and vanished. Except for those three, of course.

But Mother won't be leaning out the windows today; she'd already sighed about the heat this morning as they breakfasted, noting that any of her precious seeds she could have hoped to have scattered throughout the day would die before reaching the soil to nest themselves. Mathis sniffed at this. "You mean they'll die before they're born mummy?"

Mother didn't look up from her fork, the ornate silver dulling in her hand, as she answered her youngest child: "Yes, Dear."

Instead, the day was spent waiting. It seemed as though Mother did this often; though, Pirnella was never quite sure for what. In fact, the entire house seemed to hold it's breath, the dark wood sullen yet refusing to creek and the dishes rarely dared get so rowdy as to clink; all of this especially on Sundays. This day, in particular, Pirnella joined in the waiting, lurking carefully in the kitchen with the quick excuse of polishing the silver and dusting the old china, the set they never used in favor of the purple floral bargain with the wands that seemed to threaten something left out of the picture.

It's far afternoon when the owl comes. Mother had forgotten to make lunch again, so Pirnella folded up a piece of sandwich bread for her brother instead, stuffing various cheeses in it. Mathis, for some reason or another, refused to eat meat no matter if Pirnella warned him that all that cheese would stop him up. Perhaps he liked having an excuse to be away, to sit in the bathroom and kick his feet back and forth a few rooms down from Mother.

Pirnella heard Mother crying that afternoon too and it made her glad for Mathis' propensity towards cheese. The tears started in time with the clicking of a beak at the tiny front windows but Pirnella was too happy to see her Hogwarts letter to mind today. Perhaps that was selfish of her, or maybe it was just selfish of Mother. It all depended on whom you asked, really.

The parchment felt thick in her hands and the ink shimmered in the light of the entryway. She scurried down the hallways quickly; not wanting Mother to barge out of her room, tears and all, and scold her for her loitering in the forbidden area of the home. Instead, she settled her back against the bathroom door where she could hear Mathis humming to himself, a habit he picked up from Mother. Pirnella hoped he hadn't picked up her softness as well. She knew he had though, in some ways, with his easily bruised skin and chubby cheeks and quickly wounded feelings. But he was cheery also. Cheeriness is hard to break.

"Matty, I've gotten my Hogwarts letter!"

Her response came in the form a little squeal and a poke at the edge of her bum. Pirnella turned to see the tips of two chubby little boy fingers jammed beneath the door. She grinned lopsidedly, imagining his bum hanging on by only the edge of the seat and his toes jammed into the floor for extra prop-age.

"You'll write me won't you? You'll tell me stories all about it?" He sounded glad and sad in only the way a little boy can. Like she said, Cheeriness is hard to break.

She tapped the fingers with her own, "course I will, Matty."

Hogwarts was a dream for the both of them. Though mother had attended in her own years of youth she rarely spoke of it at the dinner table, nor reminisced of it through bedtime stories where the stars could peep in and leave their magic on the memories. Instead, Mathis and Pirnella heard about Hogwarts in the little tunes Mother rarely whispered above her hums, singing on bright days when the seeds she scattered out the windows would fall into the thick and musty soil and bloom swiftly, pink and yellows and all the colors that reminded them of happiness. She never planted her favorite Tentacula on these days; only sweet smelling and calm plants rooted themselves to her songs.

Mother sang of a saggy old hat and sticking charms and smiling on these days and in the nights that followed Pirnella would fall asleep building stories about her mother to match such words. Pirnella built such beautiful memories for her mother and now Mother only cries at the thought of her only daughter living out her days in similarity, in that place with the sagging old hat and the sticking charms and the smiles.

In the weeks that followed Mathis and Pirnella saw naught of pink or yellow flowers. Instead, the Tentacula grew fierce, winding itself around the painted wood of the front porch at Mother's silent charms. Mathis, who was always ill at ease with Mother's vicious plants steered clear of the open windows and if Pirnella were to look closely, took the miniature cheese wheels from the fridge in secret. But Pirnella was not watching closely; instead, she was broken between the way the Tentacula covered the light from her favorite three windows and the fact that the congratulations she had always anticipated upon her entrance into wizarding school never did occur.


End file.
